Manish Prakash, Bharti Airtel's director of strategic alliances, has reportedly quit the company and will soon join Telenor Group as the head of enterprise. According to an Economic Times report, Prakash, who is currently serving his notice period at Bharti Airtel, will join Telenor in September to spearhead the group's enterprise or B2B business globally.
The development follows a recent restructuring at Bharti Airtel under which the telco consolidated its domestic enterprise, Corporate and small business verticals into one business unit - Airtel Business. Prakash, who was heading Airtel's enterprise business, moved into a new role in July this year, even as the telco appointed Ashok Ganapathy as Director - Airtel Business, who now reports to Gopal Vittal, CEO and Managing Director (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel.
Prakash, who joined Airtel in January 2014, will now move to Singapore, which is Telenor Group's second headquarter after Oslo, Norway, a person told the publication.
During this tenure as the head of enterprise business, Prakash helped Bharti Airtel move away from being a traditional telecom infrastructure provider to digital services and solutions provider. He had joined Airtel in January 2014 from Accenture to drive this change in strategy. At Accenture, he served as the Managing Director - Infrastructure Managed Services (IMS) for Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ).
With over 22 years of global experience, Prakash also served SK C&C, the affiliate company of SK Telecom in Korea as the Chief Executive Officer of the international business division and served on the Board of the affiliate organizations across China, India, Central Asia and US. He has also held leadership roles at Tech Mahindra, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
Update: Airtel spokesperson - "Manish has decided to move on and we wish him the very best for his future endeavours. Airtel has consolidated its domestic enterprise, Corporate and small business verticals into one business unit - Airtel Business, which is now led by Ashok Ganapathy."
